Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-ratorâ„¢

Business

Nine Tips About Buying Equipment on eBay

I joined eBay in 1997, and I have bought and sold countless things on this great system through hundreds of transactions. When other voice talent tell me that they don’t have money to get their voice-over demo produced, take a class with a premier teacher or invest in their studio equipment, I ask them if they have considered selling things on eBay to raise some fast cash. If you don’t need it, someone on eBay wants to buy it. By the same token, if you’re looking for something, someone on eBay is selling it.

In fact, whenever I am looking for something, especially equipment for my voice-over studio, I see if I can find it on eBay. I bought my Neumann TLM 103 microphone and DAT recorder from eBay sellers. My mic was brand new in the box, yet I purchased it on eBay at a price much lower than the retail rate quoted by several leading supply houses. However, many people are reluctant to shop on eBay, though, because they fear losing their money to unscrupulous dealers.

An article in yesterday’s Atlanta Business Chronicle fuels this kind of fear and was the propelling force behind this post today. With almost 10 years of eBay experience to my credit, I offer these tips for safe shopping on eBay:

1) Always look at the seller’s feedback rating and read the comments. You need to click on the feedback number and see if the seller is maintaining positive comments from buyers. A high number doesn’t necessarily mean that the seller is currently providing good service.

2) Be wary of sellers who do not provide a picture of the actual item. Some people will use pictures from other sellers’ listings or from vendors’ web sites. You want to see a picture of the actual item under consideration. If a seller can’t provide a picture of the actual item, I move on to another listing. With millions of things for sale on eBay at any given moment, I can wait until I can see the thing that I’m buying.

3) A strong, detailed description of the item indicates the seller’s knowledge. Whether I’m buying or selling, I want to see more than a single line of description on the item. As a sidebar to this tip, make note that if you decide to sell some items, you should be aware that a description that tells a story will make your buyers more attracted to your item. People love to be told a story, and you will get more money for your item if you can make that connection. I’m not saying “tell a story” as in “tell some lies”, but rather add adjectives and background material that make your item sound interesting to the reader.

For instance, when I have sold some of my Barry Manilow collection to pay for studio equipment, I wrote about hearing Barry sing a particular song at a concert and how that song is on a rare and valuable CD. When you can make the connection to your audience, you build trust.

4) Ask questions before you bid. Note how rapidly and thoroughly the seller responds to your questions.

5) Research prices in the closed listings before placing your bid. If you’re buying something common like equipment for your voice-over studio, chances are great that somebody has recently sold the same item. You can learn a lot by reviewing the closed listings to determine how many bidders were interested in an item and the prices paid. Obviously, if you are looking at something unusual like a piece of Dresden porcelain of a woman playing harp (yes, I’ve bought some of those on eBay!), you might not find any comparison listings.

Also compare the eBay prices to those at your favorite dealers. Many of them actually sell products on eBay. My Neumann mic was offered in this manner; an audio specialist with a brick and mortar building also posted items on eBay. Depending on the item, you may need to take service into consideration. For instance, I once bought a notebook computer from someone who only ran eBay listings. Given the nature of that item and the abundance of computers available, I think I would try to find one locally or direct from the manufacturer rather than shop for one on eBay.

6) Ask about the warranty. If you need warranty repair, your warranty coverage won’t be worth much to you if the warranty on your new studio equipment covers the European Union, and you live in the United States. When you see a significantly lower price on a piece of electronics, it may be a “gray market” item. You have to decide how much the warranty is worth to you or whether you’re willing to risk buying an item that may not have warranty coverage for your country.

7) Never, ever agree to pay someone by Western Union wire transfer. The buyers in the Atlanta Business Chronicle story were cheated by sellers who were paid by wire transfer. I learned in a transaction that had nothing to do with eBay that someone using wire transfer is preying on your emotions. If they insist on a wire transfer because they are in a hurry to do the deal, you need to run in the other direction!

They may say things like they are under a bankruptcy order and have a strict deadline, so that’s why they need the money so fast. You should know that once you transfer the money out of your account and into theirs, you can’t reverse the transfer unless they have enough money in their account. They will never have enough money in their account for a reversal!

PayPal is a safe form of payment. I will use it for immediate payment, but I still make the payment on my credit card so that money is not immediately transferred out of my checking account. I should have received the item by the time I receive my credit card bill. If I haven’t, I can always put the item in dispute with my credit card issuer.

8) If you have any uneasy feelings about the seller, you can request their contact information through eBay. You have to be involved in a transaction with someone before you can get their contact information. If you have paid for something and a seller becomes unresponsive, you can request their contact information from eBay.

9) If you decide to pay by check and don’t receive your merchandise, your Postmaster General may become your new best friend. Did you know that mail fraud is a federal crime? The definition of mail fraud from the United States Postal Service site is:

U.S. Postal Inspectors investigate any crime in which the U.S. Mail is used to further a scheme–whether it originated in the mail, by telephone, or on the Internet.

The use of the U.S. Mail is what makes it mail fraud.

Before you file the claim form on that site, you can advise the seller of your intention to start a mail fraud investigation. That action just might make them either cough up the goods or refund your money

I definitely don’t purchase everything on eBay. It’s just another source for me. After consulting with an audio engineer 3 weeks ago, I decided to change my studio components from a PC-based system with an Akai DPS DAW to an Apple MacBook Pro and a Digidesign Mbox2 Pro with ProTools LE. While I looked on eBay, I didn’t buy anything from there this time. I bought the computer directly from Apple since Drew gets a great company discount there, and I found a fantastic deal at Musicians Friend that includes a CAD GXL3000 condenser microphone and Fantom 120GB firewire hard drive. I haven’t tested the mic, but it looks well-made and might be a decent mic to take with me when I travel.

I have used eBay extensively in the furtherance of my voice-over career. I have bought equipment for my studio, and I have sold things in order to raise funds for my demos, training and equipment. I hope these nine tips about buying equipment on eBay give you the confidence to try it for yourself. Feel free to post your comments about how you have used eBay to further your voice-over career or other dreams or any other tips you want to share!

 

25 ways to get publicity and traffic to your web site

I subscribe to a fantastic e-zine called The Publicity Hound written by Joan Stewart. In each week’s issue, she posts a question to “help this hound”, and the question this week was from another voice talent who wanted to know how to drive traffic to his web site. I answered with 20 suggestions on Joan’s blog but am including my answer here these ideas may help other people. Also, I am adding 5 more ideas that I didn’t include in my original answer.

As another voice-over talent, many newcomers to the industry ask me the same question. I have written essays on my blog in which I point out that voice-over is a business that requires a marketing plan. Like any business owner, the talent should determine where s/he fits in the marketplace and develop a marketing plan that targets the primary prospects on a steady and consistent basis.

Numerous ways exist to contact the prospects and depend on a person’s time, budget and creativity. If the goal is simply to drive traffic to a web site, obviously, getting a link to your site published in a popular e-zine like The Publicity Hound will do the trick!A web site is just one aspect of a marketing plan. In order to increase business and develop sustained relationships, the voice-over talent must be persistent in taking actions, such as:

1. Creating and maintaining a personal web site

2. Making phone calls to casting directors, producers, directors

3. Networking at industry meetings and events

4. Sending direct mail (postcards, newsletters, etc.)

5. Auditioning for one or more agents

6. Joining on-line casting services and submitting auditions

7. Writing postings in forums to show your expertise

8. Sending e-mails when you see opportunities such as those posted on CraigsList

9. Writing articles that can be reprinted in on-line e-zines

10. Exchanging reciprocal web links with complimentary sites

11. Listing your site on free web directories

12. Speaking at industry or community events

13. Presenting training classes

14. Placing industry advertisements in printed and web-based directories, CraigsList, etc.

15. Including your web site on the signature lines on your e-mails, on your business card, and on every piece of correspondence both on- and off-line

16. Sending imprinted products with your web site to your clients

17. Starting a blog on your web site and post comments on others’ blogs when you have expertise

18. Publishing a regular e-zine to maintain contact and requesting people to forward it

19. Asking for and rewarding referrals from satisfied clients

20. Posting testimonials of satisfied clients on your web site

This list is by no means all-inclusive, and most items don’t apply only to those in voice-over. By implementing one or more of these ideas on a regular basis, a person could spur traffic to his site and potentially increase his business.

Of course, I could have added a few more things, like:

21. Establishing a pay-per-click campaign

22. Generating press releases to announce your news

23. Getting feature stories written about you in the newspaper (a feature story is so much better than an ad! Just ask my friends and fellow voice talents Susan Berkley and Mary McKitrick if you don’t believe me)

24. Sending clippings of news stories of interest to your contacts

25. Joining an on-line networking service

26. Using search engines to locate potential contacts and querying them directly

27. Starting your own podcast

28……

I only promised 25 ideas but got carried away! When you aren’t working, you are working on obtaining work, using the tools and technology at your disposal and through whatever means you feel comfortable. It’s meaningless if someone simply visits your web site. I think a better goal is to think of ways to make connections with your prospects so that you can develop on-going business relationships.

 

10 Business Tips From My Day at the Great Pyramids

When Drew and I recently visited the Great Pyramids in Egypt, our attention was instantly focused on something. You might think we were riveted by the awe-inspiring majesty of the ancient structures that we were visiting. While we were certainly thrilled to be standing at one of the 7 Wonders of the world, we couldn’t totally concentrate on the moment as we defended ourselves against the onslaught of sales pitches of the many vendors who rushed up to us as we stepped onto the Sahara sand.

If you stood still for more than a few seconds, someone would approach you, offering to sell you something, take you for a camel ride or shoot your picture. I began to think that the sellers outnumbered the tourists.

People were hawking everything imaginable to remember your experience at the Pyramids: postcards, calendars, camels (both rides on real ones and small toys) coins, stamps, papyrus pictures, and, of course, head wraps.

In fact, head wraps seemed to be the most popular item sold by the vendors, and most of the people appeared to have identical packages of white cloth which you would tie to your head with colored rope rings. These wraps looked like the traditional Arabian, white scarves with rope rings that you see in the movies. Most people were selling them for a dollar.

When we went to the Pyramids, we didn’t have it in our minds to buy a souvenir of our visit. We and our fellow travelers had spent a lot of time, money and energy to journey to the Pyramids; all we wanted was peace and quiet to enjoy the view. All the vendors wanted was to use our limited time and waning energy under the desert sun to relieve us of money for their trinkets.

In this setting of vendors barking their prices at us as we passed them, my marketing mind couldn’t help but think: How does a person selling a product that is the same or similar to his competitors distinguish himself in a saturated marketplace? The observations I made during my trip to the Pyramids are tips that you can easily employ in marketing and improving your voice-over business.



Drew and me in front of the Sphinx and Pyramids
One of the more unusual selling approaches occurred when one person forced one of these white head wraps into Drew’s hands, started walking with us and told us he was giving us a free gift.

Observation #1: The word FREE is one of the most powerful words in the English language. When someone offers you a free gift, you can’t help but feel intrigued. Of course, our society causes us to be cynical and look for the ‘the catch’ to any offer. In your voice-over business, you can entice people with free reports, free auditions, free script assistance, free revisions in short, whatever you feel adds value to your business without taking away from your bottom line. You ARE in the voice-over business to make money, aren’t you?

He proceeded to ask us if we were American. When we said we were, he told us that he loved America and wanted to travel here someday.

Observation #2: This seller was trying to create a relationship with us. People like to do business with those with whom they have a relationship. While everyone else was simply yelling prices at us, this guy was actually attempting to develop a rapport with us.

Once he had established our nationality, the Pyramid peddler suggested that it would be nice if we could also give him a gift. (Ah, HERE’S the catch!) He didn’t specifically ask for money, but we knew he wanted money. We quickly gave the so-called free gift back to him.

Observation #3: If you give away something for free, you can’t have any expectation of getting anything in return. If you anticipate a quid pro quo, you risk offending your prospects and a loss of any future sales.

Observation #4: When you’re in a sales situation, you need to have a firm price for your product (as in voice talent and services) and be able to speak to people about the benefits they will receive from spending their money with you.

We also visited the Sphinx, which is located at the site of the Pyramids. Here, the peddlers offered the same merchandise as at the Pyramids but also added scarves and crystal Pyramids. Souvenir shops lined the road, but I didn’t see an official souvenir stand at either site. I suppose that anyone who wants to sell stuff could do so.

We had successfully skirted around the sea of sellers while entering the chamber to the Sphinx. Our guide even shooed away one particularly pesky merchant by speaking rather sharply to him in Arabic. On our way out, though, Drew noticed someone selling a head wrap that was unlike the 100 he had seen prior in the day. All of the others were small pieces of white linen fabric, while this one was a large, black and white checked fabric similar to one worn by a former Mid-East leader. Drew stopped to inquire about it.

Observation #5: Find a niche and fill it. I know that may seem easier said than done, especially when I’m talking about the voice-over industry, but we all have unique voices and unique backgrounds that we bring to the microphone. Figure out your signature sound, and find a way to use your experiences in your marketing. Also, if you have some tie-in to a celebrity, use it!

Drew and the vendor haggled about the price of this head wrap for several minutes before Drew finally bought it at a price considerably lower than the dealer’s original price. However, Drew did pay more for his head wrap than the white linen wraps seen at the Pyramids and more than he originally planned to spend.

Observation #6: Just because everybody else in your sandbox is charging low prices and negotiating price cuts with every new prospect doesn’t mean that you have to follow the trend. When you cut your prices, you are the one who bleeds. If you want to charge and achieve a premium price for your voice-over talent, you need to be ready with factual, persuasive reasons based on quality, service or other aspects why the prospect should pay the extra money. For an in-depth and fascinating discussion of this subject, I cannot recommend too highly that you get Larry Steinmetz’s book How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors: Winning Every Sale at Full Price, Rate, or Fee.

Observation #7: Even in a market that is saturated with vendors, people are willing to increase their budgets to acquire a quality product that matches their specifications.


Drew shows off his new purchase
Following the visits to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, we were taken on a Jeep safari and camel ride at the Saqqara Country Club near the 4000-year-old Step Pyramid, which we also visited. Both the Jeep safari and camel ride were included in the package price for the day trip to the Pyramids. Our camels were led by Bedouins walking by the camels on foot, and our guide told us that $2 was a customary tip for these ‘drivers’. Consequently, Drew and I each put $2 in our pockets with the plan to give it to each driver at the end of the ride.

The camel ride lasted 30-40 minutes, which was longer than we expected. During the entire ride, our drivers kept asking if everything was okay. They were eager to please and ensure that we were having a good time. However, they didn’t know a lot of English, so the rest of the conversation consisted of constant requests for money at the end of the ride.

I was uncomfortable during the ride because I only had one foot in a stirrup. I never found the stirrup on the right side, and I kept feeling like I would fall off the camel’s back. I told Moses, my driver, about this problem numerous times. Maybe he didn’t understand me since he would respond by telling me about needing money to feed his wife and 5 hungry children.

Observation #8: If your client reports a problem to you, you should fix it immediately. Listen twice as much as you talk. Do everything in your power to maintain your client’s trust.

Sami, Drew’s driver, gave the reins to Drew so Drew could steer the camel. Drew gave his camera to Sami and asked Sami to take our picture. Though we’re sure Sami doesn’t own a digital camera, he did a great job in using Drew’s camera. When people say I look extremely happy in this picture, I tell them it is because I was reunited with my Sheik of the Desert, who had been leading our little caravan of camels. Drew says he thinks I’m laughing because I know the hot, bumpy ride is almost over. 🙂


My Sheik and me on our camel ride in the Sahara Desert
We decided that, contrary to the advice of our guide, the drivers deserved more than a $2 tip for the long walk and value-added service. Drew had a mixture of US and European currency in his wallet. He gave a US $20 to Sami; however, he gave Moses a 20 Euro, which was worth around $25 due to the exchange rate. Even though Sami took pictures of us and gave Drew the reins of his camel, Drew paid Moses more because Moses was taking care of me. Also, Moses was also missing many teeth and had a larger family than Sami. Drew wanted to do more to add to Moses’ prosperity than to Sami’s. Rather than thanking Drew for his generosity, Sami was jealous of the amount given to Moses and demanded that Drew give him $5 more. Drew refused.

Observation #9: Do the best job that you can do and express gratitude for all of your blessings. Convey your appreciation to your clients for choosing you as their voice talent and for their prompt payment of your invoices. You would do well to set up a regular system to maintain contact with them that shows them you are thinking of them and their needs, not yours.

Observation #10: We live in a global economy. If you don’t have a passport, get one. If you have a passport, use it. Travel the world to spend time in other cultures and see how other people really live as opposed to taking your world view solely from the things that the media chooses to tell you. I can’t promise that you will gain creative ideas about your voice-over business, but I can promise that you will gain a perspective about your place in this world and an appreciation for the abundant lifestyle you are privileged to lead if you are a voice-over artist.

 

36-hour delay may work for luggage but not in voice-over

You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

— John Lydgate

As an aside — when I was researching the correct attribution of this quote, I was interested to learn that, according to Wikipedia, the Oxford English Dictionary cites Lydgate with the earliest record of using the word talent in reference to a gifted state of natural ability.

Lydgate’s quote was on my mind because of the first of the trip-related stories that I wanted to write. In your voice-over business, do you have a level of service that you provide to your clients? Do you guarantee your clients’ satisfaction with your work? Have you done any contingency planning so that you can provide your voice-over recordings to your clients in the event of unexpected delays?

I have not written terms of service for my voice-over business, but I strive to ensure that every client is totally delighted with the work I perform. Ever heard of the phrase ‘the show must go on’? If someone has booked your time, a professional talent doesn’t call in sick and leave the client hanging in the face of a deadline.

In contrast, many large corporations have extensive written terms of service that their customers should expect. Human error, mechanical problems and forces of nature can cause the terms of service to decline or sometimes disappear.

Prior to our recent Greek Isles cruise, Drew and I flew non-stop on Delta Airlines from Atlanta to Athens, Greece. Originally, we were ticketed to fly three segments, two of which were on Delta’s partner airline, Air France. However, weather delays at the Atlanta airport would have caused us to miss the longest segment from Washington, DC to Paris, France. Delta did the right thing to act quickly and rebook us for its own non-stop flight.

Unfortunately, our luggage was not rebooked with us. After a 10-hour flight, we arrived in Athens with only the clothes on our backs. New security regulations prevent passengers from taking even basic toiletries such as toothpaste in carry-on luggage. In all of our travels, we have never taken a change of clothes in carry-on luggage; after this experience, we’ll probably change that practice.


Drew filing the claim for our luggage in Athens

To shorten this story, we adopted the attitude that life wasn’t so bad if our worst problem was that we were on vacation in Athens, Greece, wearing the same clothes for a couple of days. We went sight-seeing and had a marvelous time. Our luggage finally showed up at our hotel 36 hours after we did.

Delta has an impressive web page which outlines in detail its customer commitment, which states

We have outlined our responsibilities and how we will fulfill them below in 12-key points. We intend to ensure that your air travel experience will encompass, to the best of our abilities, the most comprehensive customer service possible.

It sounds great until one reads just a little further and finds this jarring sentence:

Note: Delta Customer Commitment applies to domestic travel only.

Is Delta saying it has no customer commitment to its international passengers? If a business operates under the assumption that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, why bother trying? I wouldn’t say you should expect to please ALL of the people, but you should make the effort if the people you are not pleasing are in the subset of people in your client base.

We fly Delta almost exclusively and usually experience no problems. Surprisingly, though, this experience was the second time in 15 months that Delta delayed our luggage prior to a cruise. The first time, the luggage was on the next flight and didn’t cause us any real hardship.

I wrote to Delta Baggage Services about our situation. While we can never get back the 36 hours we were in a foreign country without luggage, we received a nice letter of apology and, as a measure of Delta’s goodwill, some vouchers toward a future flight. The letter also said that we could be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket expenses we had incurred as a result of the delay. I have decided that regardless of the statement on its web site to the contrary, Delta really does have customer commitment to its international passengers after all!

Like all of my personal stories, this one has some connection to your voice-over business. A voice-over talent lives by the clock. We think in terms of spots that run :30 and :60, which really are a half-second shorter. We work with producers who want things today, in 2 hours, in an hour, as soon as you can get it done, NOW. Union contracts specify rates half-hour increments. If you must book time at a studio, you pay rates by the half-hour or hour.

If you were the cause of an hour delay on a project, you might receive a lot of negative publicity and potentially a cut in pay. Can you imagine the long-term repercussions to your voice-over business if you caused a 36-hour delay to a client?

Delays are an inescapable fact of life. Have you thought about safeguards so that you don’t cause a delay?

Your contingency planning for delays and other unavoidable problems can be your saving grace in the eyes of your client.

What will you do if your Internet connection suddenly goes down, and you can’t deliver your recordings when you promised? Do you have some sort of back-up delivery method? Sometimes a client might accept a CD by overnight mail. I have even hand-delivered a CD to clients in town. If I needed to deliver something today to someone in another city, depending on where I am, I might take my file to a friend’s house, a studio, an office supply center, a coffee shop, a hotel business office or potentially a library in order to transmit the file to the waiting client. My possibilities of getting Internet access in a hurry are endless. Write these access points down in a calm period so you will have a list if you need it.

Here’s another scenario for you: What do you do when a client contacts you and needs a recording that you can’t produce in the time allotted because you are ill, on vacation or swamped with other projects? When this situation has happened to me, I am prepared for it because I can refer my client to another professional voice talent whom I trust. We have a reciprocal agreement as she has called on me in similar circumstances.

The clients are grateful for the referral, and I haven’t lost a client by providing this service. Instead, I have kept their projects on schedule by saving them audition time and directing them to someone I’m confident would do a good job.

Are you making regular backups of your computer’s hard drive? I’ll let you in on a secret: The only day that you need to make a backup is the day before your system crashes! Trust me — if you’re working on a long narration project or an audiobook, you will want to copy those edited files to another drive, CD, DAT or backup tape.

If a client lets you know that work you completed did not meet expectations, how do you respond? Do you guarantee your work? I recall one occasion where I voiced a narration while recovering from severe congestion. My client called a few weeks later and asked me to re-record certain parts where the congestion affected my speech. However, he was thrilled that I decided to re-record the whole thing so that the tonality of sound would match throughout the recording.

I don’t try to please all of the people all of the time. I prefer instead to concentrate my efforts on pleasing that select group of people known as my voice-over clients. I even have the same level of delay-free, customer commitment to both domestic and international clients. 🙂

 

Voice-Over Secrets from Adam, Bob and Bob

I ran across a fantastic entry on fellow voice-over actor Adam Creighton’s blog titled Acting is a lot of work. It’s the sort of thing I wish I had written.

I don’t know Adam and haven’t previously read his blog. However, he strikes me as an extremely talented, goal-oriented guy who can inspire all of us with his tremendous work ethic and fierce determination to live the life of his dreams. I particularly liked the paragraph where he said that if you don’t have work, you make your own. I also have used comic books for character voice creation and practice, but Adam takes that method one step further by creating simple animation by taking pictures with his digital camera.

Some of the most stellar ideas for business expansion have come from people making their own work. Hollywood stars often have their own production companies; why shouldn’t a voice actor do the same thing? In his most excellent course You Must Act!, actor/writer/director Bob Fraser advises would-be actors to cast yourself in roles that you want. Whether you are acting on stage or in a voice-over booth, his advice is still sound (pardon the pun).

I was fortunate to have a personal consultation with Bob in which we discussed that point. Casting oneself means that you know your strong suit, and you also know the things that you enjoy doing. You therefore actively seek out those opportunities or possibly create them for yourself. Adam knows this secret.

As much as I enjoyed seeing all of the positive and creative things that appeared on Adam’s list, I also must mention the striking absence of something from his list that seems to fill countless hours for many people. At no point did Adam say he spent his precious time comparing himself to or worrying about his competition.

Of course, I’m sure a smart man like Adam is keenly aware of the competition in the voice-over industry and his other performing arts fields. However, from reading his detailed list of activities, I am delighted to see that he is much too busy with the improvement of his own career to be concerned about the careers of other people. (By the way, I hope that the industrious Adam is way too busy to be spending his valuable time absorbed in gossip and idle chit chat on his cell phone or consumed with the results of a reality TV show.)

Comparing yourself to other people is a guaranteed formula for feeling BAD! Without too much effort, you can always find someone who apparently:

  • has more credits and/or more impressive credits
  • has booked more jobs recently
  • makes more money
  • has better equipment
  • has more agents and/or more aggressive agents and/or agents in more markets
  • has higher search engine rankings
  • has a better demo
  • has more training
  • has better marketing promotions
  • has more audition opportunities

You get the idea. By comparing yourself and your achievements to anyone or anything, you more than likely will find fault with your own situation. This negativity can cause feelings ranging from discouragement to despair and not only jeopardize your career but damage relationships as well. We are all unique, and we all have different gifts to offer the world. You cannot use the career of another person as a yardstick with which to measure your progress because every circumstance is different.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t review the demos, web sites and other marketing materials from others in the voice-over industry. I believe that we all can learn from others’ approaches and successes. Read the biographies of voice actors, business people or anyone else whom you admire. Success leaves clues. If someone else has done something that you want to do, you can emulate their steps. Your journey won’t be the same, but at least you will be on the right path.

From Adam’s comments about suggesting the toy and comic book licensing deal, I wondered if, in fact, he even views other voice actors as competition. I prefer to have a cooperative attitude instead of a competitive one. I know that my voice is not right for every project, and I have turned down projects that I didn’t want to voice because I didn’t like the words that would be coming out of my mouth.

We are all voice talents with something special to offer. Bob Souer, a successful voice actor who is as gifted when writing on the page as he is when bringing words to life behind the mic, wrote an eloquent post on his blog addressing the competition aspect of auditions . In Bob’s mind – and in mine, too – an audition isn’t a competition. When you read his captivating words comparing an audition to a Michelangelo sculpture, you won’t enter an audition situation with a competitive attitude again.

The next time that you think your voice-over career or any other part of your life is unsatisfactory, I would offer this challenge. Ask yourself if you’re really using every bit of available time constructively in pursuit of your dreams like Adam. Are you like veteran voice actor Bob Souer, who views every audition opportunity with the excitement that a sculptor views that new chunk of marble? Have you implemented the advice of the very wise Bob Fraser to cast yourself?

Look at the name of his course again. YOU MUST ACT. Even if you don’t cast yourself for parts that you want, you must take action if you expect anything to happen in your voice-over career. If you remember your high school physics, you’ll know that Isaac Newton stated:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

All of your actions won’t necessarily lead to the reactions that you want. However, the Universe responds in kind to the energy that you expend. Once you start devoting yourself to the full-time pursuit of making your dream life a reality, I promise that you will be as happy, creative and fulfilled as Adam seems to be.

 

The business of voice-over is on my mind after vacation

Drew and I have been on vacation for almost 3 weeks on a wonderful Greek Islands cruise. During the trip, we visited Greece, Egypt, Turkey and Paris. If you’re interested, you can look at our awesome photo album/scrapbook that we created with Drew’s amazing pictures at Shutterfly, the best company for photo processing and related products that you can imagine.

Even though I was on a fabulous vacation, I never stopped thinking of ways to progress my voice-over business. I have some stories to relate at another time. Today, though, I wanted to tell you about something that was awaiting me in the mail upon my arrival home: my copy of Pat Fraley’s new book: The Gypsy’s Guide to The Business of Voice-Over.

I have taken classes with Pat and his business partner Hillary Huber, and I think I have a copy of everything he has published. Since I don’t live in LA, I take every opportunity to drink at the well of this master’s fountain of knowledge. I find the real value of this latest book to be in the CD that accompanies it. Pat and Hillary entertain and inform you on the CD just as if you were sitting in one of their voice-over classes. They cover the text in the book so that you can hear the material while commuting to your next voice-over gig.

Among other material covered, our delightful teachers succinctly differentiate the key concepts of brandingand style, and they play some excellent demos to illustrate their points. However, guest interviews on the CD with Kristine Oller and D. B. Cooper provide key information not included in the book. Kristine Oller’s comments about focus are something that every voice artist should hear and act upon.

Sometimes, we don’t know what to do. Sometimes, we know what to do but don’t do it. By repeatedly listening to Pat and Hillary and their guests on the The Gypsy’s Guide to The Business of Voice-Over, I have a feeling that it will be easier for me to do all the right things to improve my voice-over business in the future.

In my opening paragraph, I linked to our Shutterfly vacation photobook. As promotion is one thing discussed rather heavily in Pat’s book, I realized I could mention that I have successfully used Shutterfly products in promoting my voice-over business. Like favorite teachers Pat and Hillary, I can’t say enough good things about that company! They have a tremendous array of products, great prices and exceptionally fast delivery. If you can put a photo on something, you can also put your logo on it! Just think of the possibilities for personal branding and promotion!